The demand for renewable energy in Western Canada received a major boost this year when the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan announced their new targets for renewable power generation. Westwood attended both the CanSIA (Canadian Solar Industry Association) conference in Edmonton and the CanWEA (Canadian Wind Energy Association) conference in Calgary. Both events were a great opportunity to network with others in the industry and to get a good idea of the demand for large scale renewable energy in Western Canada.
Alberta has set a target of 30% renewable power generation by 2030 (30 by 30) and Saskatchewan is aiming for 50% renewable energy by 2030. That translates into somewhere in the area of 1600 MW of new clean energy in Saskatchewan and around 5000 MW in Alberta. So what does this all mean!? Well to try and put this into context, the $400M Meikle Wind project under construction in the Tumbler Ridge area of BC will generate somewhere in the neighborhood 180 MW – or approximately 3% of the numbers announced by these provinces.
At the CanWEA conference last week, the Alberta government introduced the Renewable Electricity Act to legislate its target of 30% renewable energy by 2030. Alberta will be proceeding with a procurement of an initial 400 megawatts of renewable energy as a first step towards meeting the target.
This is all very exciting for us here at Westwood. We bring over 40 years of expertise in the power generation and distribution industry with us to the renewable energy sector. We are proud CanWEA members and are happy to be actively involved in an industry that is the #1 source of new electricity generation in Canada for 5 years running.
For more information on wind energy visit http://canwea.ca/
For more information on solar energy visit http://www.cansia.ca/
References:
http://albertasask.canadianclean.com/files/Article-report.pdf
http://www.saskwind.ca/blogbackend/2015/11/24/2030-renewables-targets-sk-vs-ab
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/billions-expected-spent-green-energy-144000319.html